Arbour Hill Cemetery and Prison began as an outpost of empire and ended as a sanctuary of rebellion. The prison, designed by Sir Joshua Jebb and Frederick Clarendon, opened in 1848 as a military gaol, built to discipline the soldiers of the nearby Royal Barracks, now Collins Barracks.

The adjoining cemetery had been consecrated a decade earlier, around 1834 or 1840, to hold the remains of British soldiers and their families. Its small Church of the Sacred Heart, which served both the soldiers and the prisoners, still stands on the site today.

When the Easter Rising broke out in 1916, few could have imagined that this quiet military corner would become the resting place of the nation's martyrs. After the rebellion's collapse, fourteen of its leaders, among them Pearse, Connolly, Clarke, and Plunkett, were executed by firing squad at Kilmainham Gaol. Connolly, badly wounded during the fighting, was tied to a chair to face the rifles, unable to stand.

The British authorities, fearing public outrage, refused to return the bodies to their families. Under the cover of darkness, the corpses were taken by military wagon to Arbour Hill. There, in a corner of the prison yard, they were buried together in an unmarked pit. 

Quicklime was said to have been poured over the bodies, though historians differ on whether this was meant to hasten decay or simply for hygiene. Either way, the intent was to bury the rebellion along with the men.

What the British command could not have foreseen was that they were planting the seed of Ireland's modern national myth. In 1961, the Proclamation of the Irish Republic was inscribed on a sweeping wall of Wicklow granite behind the grave. 

By 1966, the fiftieth anniversary of the Rising, Arbour Hill had become the centrepiece of the state's commemoration, the once-unmarked ground now covered with a simple mound, surrounded by a limestone wall engraved with the names of the fourteen executed men.

Each year the state comes here to remember the Rising, but outside those formal ceremonies Arbour Hill is an eerily quiet and frequently empty spot, made stranger still by the fact that it sits behind a working prison with no grand entrance to announce itself. First-time visitors often walk past it entirely.

Arbour Hill Prison still functions, no longer a British military gaol but a medium security prison, taken over by the Department of Justice in 1975. The less said about its current inmates the better.